Out of the Black (6 page)

He accessed the forensic scans on the item. He cut the glyph from the scan and kicked off a global search. While the search ran, he turned his attention to the internal scan of the object. There was a small amount of solid state connected to the activating stud, but no other complexity inside the object. The scanner showed the internals of the object to be solid, with no structures or mechanisms. The solid state, though unmapped as yet, wasn't enough for much more than key recognition. The preliminary forensics tag classified the object as inert-green: useless and harmless. There were no interesting mechanics, electronics, or chemicals. The scan registered the composition of the object as the same ceramic alloy used to make most firearms, with traces of tungsten and platinum.

He rummaged around in the driver's evidence bag and came away with two rings.

Each ring was made of what looked like platinum, an odd choice for a lock ring, but not unheard-of. He checked the window that held the search results for the glyph- nothing.

He opened another window and brought up the forensic team's detailed scan of the rings. He checked the composition: platinum. No surprise there. He checked for any surface marks. None bore any manufacturer's identification marks, but each bore a small replica of the glyph that adorned the bottom of the maybe-gun. The mark was scrawled lightly and less than a millimeter in diameter. They would have been too small for him to notice if he were examining the rings physically, but the scanner saw them clearly.

He slipped one of the rings on his finger, and with the end of the couldn't-be-a-stun-gun carefully pointed away, up at the roof of the car,pushed the stud- nothing but the lock-fail tone. That was expected, since the thing was basically a solid metal bar with a button.

He removed the ring and tried the other, carefully aimed the not-stunner at the roof, and pressed the stud. The results were... well, stunning.

A long blade exploded from the formerly featureless end of the device with the ringing sound of a swiftly drawn sword. The impact of the blade with the roof drove the hilt, along with his unprepared hand, down into his groin. His breath sucked in between clenched teeth. Shock ate the pain for now, but he was left with a sickening feeling in his guts that promised plenty of regret later. Pinned to the seat by the hilt of the sword, he struggled to dislodge the sword from either the roof or his... pants.

Releasing only the smallest whimper, which he liked to think of more in terms of a manly groan, his fingers searched desperately for the stud on the hilt. Through the starbursts that filled his vision, hoping that another press wouldn't double the blade's size, he pressed the stud again.

With a small shriek of metal as the blade pulled from the roof, the blade snapped back into the hilt. Relief- then pain that doubled him over. After a few moments of manly writhing- during which he slammed his forehead into the steering wheel at least three times for distraction- he was able to regain his faculties sufficiently to drop the retractable sword onto the passenger seat. He stumbled out of the car and hobbled around in a circle for a while. After a few minutes, he was able to do so without the limp. Finally, he leaned on the car's roof and tried to collect his thoughts.

Macho. If only his father could see him now. He hoped that the other officers wouldn't come up the hill looking for him. He could imagine the enjoyment that Malloy and Rodriguez would derive from his little incident. That part would definitely not go into his report.

He examined the clean, four-centimeter gash in the roof of his car. He ran his finger along the smooth edges and thought about the sharp mystery weapon that had been used to hack Dr. Lutine apart.

He opened the door, reached across to the passenger seat, and retrieved the collapsed sword. He checked the end again. It was still solid with no hint of how or from where the blade emerged. Back outside the car, he pointed both ends of it carefully away from his groin and pressed the stud again.

With the same metallic ringing, the sword shot from the hilt. Extended, the straight double-edged blade was just less than a meter long and perhaps four centimeters wide. Two secondary blades extended out and snapped back sideways to form a crossbar of about three centimeters on each side. He turned the blade and looked at it edge-on. Its thickest point was perhaps two millimeters. The edges glittered with the night's few stars.

"Where have you been all my life?" He said, wondering. Though his guts were still knotted, all was forgiven.

He held the sword comfortably in both hands, then swung it easily through the most interesting parts of the third form for mid-range weapons. Its weight was comfortable, it's mass seemed perfectly balanced. If the blade flexed at all, it wasn't evident. Perfect!

He held up the blade again and examined it, attempting to discover how it folded or disassembled to fit within the hilt. He found nothing. It was a solid, inflexible segment of elegantly forged metal.

He watched closely as he pressed the stud aain. In a fraction of a second, the crossbar and blade retracted. It appeared that the blade simply slid back into the handle. Of course, this wasn't possible as the handle was perhaps one-fifth the size of the blade.

He pocketed the sword and gingerly lowered himself back into the seat. He was careful, but it still hurt. When he finished with the wincing, he picked up his tablet, which still displayed the empty internal scan of the sword. Someone had found a way around the rules of evidence established in 2032. Since then, physical evidence was not entered in court. Forensic scans were easier to present, more detailed, and harder to fake than the actual physical objects. Generally, evidence that was not deemed illegal was never confiscated, just scanned and returned. One of his responsibilities in this investigation would have been to give these objects to the victims' next of kin.

Of course, now the sword would have to go to the lock-up for illegal or dangerous evidence... eventually. He hoped he'd have time to drop this thing by his father's place before then. He wanted to know if Dad had heard of anything like this before... and he wanted to see his face when he extended the sword for the first time.

He picked up the driver's evidence bag and fished out the tablet. He used his own tablet to administer the warrant key, then copied out the data. A quick examination of the data showed that the decryption had worked. There was a sparse calendar, a few entries in the address book, two novels, and five videos. The novels were romances; filled with protagonists with long, thin fingers and creamy skin, no doubt. The movies were recent romantic comedies, with the only oldie,
Blade Runner- The Director's Cut
departing from that genre. On a whim, he pulled up the tablet's theater and checked the logs. The other movies had been recently leased and most had been watched, but
Blade Runner
had been watched about once a month since the tablet had been initially configured three years ago. He checked the file histories, which showed that the film had been in the initial transfer of data from Mr. Sieberg's previous tablet.

So it was an old and enduring favorite. The movie obsession felt like a clue. In fact, Ping would have been a lot more suspicious if he hadn't seen
Blade Runner
in the last year himself. Solid film, but only the director's cut was really worth watching more than twenty or thirty times. He had first been exposed to it in an ethics class in graduate school while training for his first career as a family counselor.

The movie takes place in a dark "future" (circa 2019... before Ping was born) where genetically engineered artificial people called Replicants are created to serve as soldiers and slaves. The story revolved around Deckard, a reluctant policeman who hunts rogue Replicants. In the movie, a ruthless band of three-year-old Replicants fought to find their creator in order to force him to give them more life than the four years written into their DNA. During the course of the investigation, Deckard falls in love with another Replicant who has been implanted with false memories and thinks she's human. The end of the director's cut was surprising in its implications.

In the class, the movie had been the basis for conversations on the nature of reality, about what happens when the assumptions on which we base our lives are ripped away. For Ping, the movie had been about alienation... about lost children. He couldn't help but feel for the Replicants. He smiled, remembering how at the time he'd wanted to help the poor doomed Replicants. Of course, it had turned out he wasn't so good at helping anyone.

"Too bad she won't live. But then agor
who does
?" echoed from his memory of the film like an accusation. Ping wondered how many other family counselors' careers had a body count. He realized just how bitter his smile had grown and did his best to pack it away- work to do. He moved on to the computer's address book.

***
Anne stumbled through the door and into the empty train station bathroom. She made it to one of the basins before a large wall-to-wall mirror. In the mirror, she examined the worst of her wounds... she was a mess. The cuts on her face weren't bleeding too badly, but her blue sweater was now a brown-clouded mess of rain-diluted blood. Her knees were still bleeding, and would probably bleed more when she pulled the glass out.

She dreaded looking at her neck, afraid of what she would find. She was afraid of how bad it was, but mostly she was afraid of how weird it might be. Her main barrier to investigating the wound on her throat was a surprising lack of faith in reality. She had witnessed some rather amazing things, and she knew that she should be thinking about stress and hysteria, about games her mind could have played, but she knew what she saw- okay, she had no idea what she saw, but she had
seen
it.

So, she stood, chin down, looking at the blood on the neckline of her sweater. Questions filled her mind. Was it going to be two neat holes like in the movies, or was it going to be a more realistic set of incisor-slashes? When was she going to start fading out of the mirror? Did she still have a soul, and if not would she still cry during movies? Do vampires still get to eat donuts?

Wait a minute! She grimaced and examined her canines in the mirror. No melodramatic fangs... maybe only when she was angry. "Grrrr!" She made an angry face in the mirror. "Grrrr! Rrrrrgh! Grrrrr!" She tried more diligently- nothing.

She was about to try an even louder, more embarrassing growl when she heard a flush from one of the stalls. So she wasn't alone after all... great. She fought off the impulse to flee before the flusher came out of the stall to pretend not to stare at her. Her face burned with embarrassment.

Maybe only when she was humiliated? She checked her teeth again- nothing.

Emboldened by her inability to grow fangs and her reflection's general opacity, she slowly lifted her chin, exposing a dark red... hickey? No.

Yes. A hickey? This explained why the transit cop hadn't made her get medical treatment... there was no horrible gore of injury, only the red badge of teenage affection. Sweet crap no!

Oh yes. Her hand came up to inspect it. As her fingers brushed it, a tingle crawled across her feet. That was weird. She touched the mark again and the same static electricity tingle moved across her legs, back, and then her face. It felt like a network of electric filaments extended from her little love mark throughout her body. She spent a few seconds just exploring the feeling- weird!

The skin of the hickey felt hard beneath her fingers. She bent closer to examine it in the mirror, head pulled to the left to offer her a better view. On closer inspection, it seemed more like a burn than a hickey; it was hard beneath the surface like a subcutaneous scab.

Her investigation was interrupted when an elderly woman exited the farthest stall. Sure enough, the lady did a terrible job of pretending not to stare at the fat, wet, bloody, growling chick ten centimeters from the mirror examining her sadomasochistic hickey.

After a few seconds of eyes-closed, this-is-not-happening paralysis, Anne turned on the water and pretended to wash her hands. She managed to keep her moan to a low, tight "Mmmmm" as the soap and hot water entered the gashes on her fingers and palms. She couldn't stop washing though... the point of pretending to wash your hands was to avoid drawing even more attention to yourself. Besides, this had to be good for the cuts, right?

No. The first sob caught her off guard. NO! But there was no holding back the tears. They joined the red-tinged water in the sink. In the mirror, her flushed face was contorted by grief. The sobs broke up and punctuated her moan of pain. It was unbearable and unstoppable.

She felt a light hand on her shoulder. She looked up, and saw the little old lady from the stall attached to the hand. The lady looked at her like she wanted to help, but didn't yet know how.

"It's okay sweetie," she said, "It's all going to work out."

Anne shrugged helplessly. She tried to say she was sorry, but only more unintelligible sorrow came out. Anne surrendered to the humiliation. She leaned on the sink and let her head droop. The weeping was absolute, and for a moment, all consuming.

During all this, grandma didn't move, she just stood there, hand on Anne's shoulder, squeezing occasionally. The way tonight was going, it occurred to Anne that she should probably keep an eye on the old woman's purse.

After the storm had passed, granny let go of Anne's shoulder. "You're soaked." She said, noticing Anne's smallest problem. "Let's see if we can't do something about that."

Anne actually did the abortive defense-flinch as the lady's purse came up, but the lady opened it and pulled out a small plastic pouch. "This ought to help!" She said in a voice thinned by age and softened by concern. "I've never had to wear it... I only bought it in case the weather report is wrong and I get stuck downtown without my raincoat." She held out a clear plastic bag containing a bright yellow disposable rain poncho.

"I couldn't..." Anne started.

"It's okay!" Grandma interrupted, "I've got a box of twelve at home- ordered them online. You need one twelfth of my poncho hoard much more than I need to hoard it."